Shalala walks into anti-Castro buzz saw

There’s a simple rule in running for Congress in Miami: Don’t campaign with someone who praised Fidel Castro and fought sanctions against Venezuela’s dictatorial regime.

But Donna Shalala didn’t figure it out until it was too late.

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In a district filled with Castro-hating Cuban-Americans and Venezuelan exiles, Shalala’s campaign committed an egregious gaffe — and set off a round of Democratic finger-pointing — by posting an announcement that she would hold a campaign event Wednesday with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and her fellow Californian, Rep. Barbara Lee.

In 2016, Lee had said Castro’s death should be mourned.

Lee’s visit was ultimately canceled, but not before Shalala was savaged in a debate by her Republican opponent. Shalala and Pelosi were also protested by Republicans, some of whom pounded on the door outside and shouted “go back to Cuba!” “commie!” and “witches!”

The timing was especially poor for Shalala, occurring in the final weeks of a race in which the Democrat has struggled to lock down an open, Democratic-leaning House seat that was once assumed to be hers for the taking.

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About 57 percent of the district’s voters are Hispanic, the bulk of whom is Cuban-American. In addition to Cuban exiles, the district also has Venezuelans who despise dictator Nicolas Maduro’s regime and immigrants from Nicaragua, many of whom oppose socialist Daniel Ortega.

Before the 2018 campaign cycle, Democrats viewed the seat as one of the best pick-up opportunities in the nation. Not only was popularRepublican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen retiring, but the district voted for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump by nearly 20 points. Shalala also had a solid profile: former head of the Clinton Foundation, one-time University of Miami president and former Health and Human Services secretary.

Miami’s Republican-leaning Cuban exile community isn’t as powerful as it once was, but the influx of Venezuelans fleeing Maduro and the rise of Ortega has given Miami-Dade’s Republican Party a renewed sense of focus —and Shalala walked right into that buzz saw.

“There are still Cubans in the congressional district who hate Fidel Castro and they don’t like someone praising Fidel Castro,” Miami-Dade County GOP Chairman Nelson Diaz said. “The problem for Shalala — and I’m not personally accusing her of being a socialist or a communist — is it reinforces our narrative that Donna isn’t from here. She doesn’t understand the community. She has no real roots. The Democrats were so clueless that they didn’t shut this down instantly. It’s crazy.”

An independent Mason-Dixon poll last week showed former Spanish-language TV journalist and personality Maria Elvira Salazar leading Shalala by 2 percentage points — and Diaz said that lead may grow as word blazes through the Cuban-American community about Lee’s comments.

Shalala and Pelosi insisted they were unaware of the logistical details of the event.

“I don’t know who invited her. We have members of Congress popping down here all the time,” said Shalala, who stressed that she’s anti-Castro.

Pelosi denied knowing why Lee decided not to appear at the event.

“You’re asking me a question that I cannot answer,” Pelosi told POLITICO. “I would not begin to go down that path because I don’t know what the objection to her was and why she is not here.”

Pelosi said Lee told her the night before that she was in Georgia instead.

“She’s all over the country. It’s a coincidence,” Pelosi said of her friend. “We are friends. She’s my colleague in California. She is a leader in the Congress of the United States, a respected leader. But I’m all over the country, everyplace, all the time. And by coincidence, some of my colleagues overlap in their travels. But it isn’t a decision that they make to go to be where I am. They’re going to where they’re going. And it sometimes overlaps.”

But according to Democratic and campaign insiders in Washington and Miami, Lee’s decision to come to Miami came at the request of Pelosi, whose visit was planned a month before. Lee’s appearance was relayed to the Shalala campaign through Washington Democratic channels on Monday night, said the sources, who asked to remain anonymous to avoid angering Pelosi.

Shalala’s staff felt they were boxed in. They knew the Lee appearance could be problematic but this was an event that Pelosi was coming down for and they were afraid of slighting the Democratic leader and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. So staffers on Tuesday posted the campaign announcement on Shalala’s website the following day anyway, touting the arrival of Lee and Pelosi.

“Pelosi is the future House speaker. She’s the most powerful Democrat in the chamber,” said a Shalala campaign staffer, explaining the decision to plow ahead. “We couldn’t offend her and tell her she couldn’t bring her friend. We were stuck.”

Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a Democrat running in the adjacent 26th Congressional District, was also scheduled to attend the event with Shalala and the two California congresswomen. But when Mucarsel-Powell learned of Lee’s comments, she quickly reversed course andsaid she would not attend.

“Debbie’s no fool,” said one source familiar with Mucarsel-Powell’s thinking.

Shalala was told of Lee’s comments but didn’t insist on removing the announcement from the website. But her campaign manager, Will Washington, worked the phones with the DCCC to try to get Lee to pull out.

As staffers began researching Lee to prepare for any questions that might come up, they were shocked at what they found. To their amazement and horror, Lee praised Castro after his death.

“We need to stop and pause and mourn his loss,” Lee told the San Jose Mercury News of Castro’s death in 2016.

And that wasn’t all. Lee had also penned a letter to then-President Barack Obama asking him not impose sanctions on Venezuela, whose dictatorial regime now vies with Cuba’s as anathema on the campaign trail for both Republicans and Democrats in South Florida and, especially, in Florida’s 27th Congressional District.

Meanwhile, the clock was ticking down to Shalala’s first debate Tuesday night with Salazar, the GOP nominee. The debate, at Salazar’s insistence, was in Spanish, a language Shalala doesn’t speak.

“It seems to me that Mrs. Shalala should reconsider and cancel that press conference,” Salazar said, according to The Miami Herald. “That is an offense and a lack of sensitivity to prisoners, to those shot, to the exiles who live here in the city of Miami.”

Shalala was baffled. Salazar was speaking loudly in Spanish in one of Shalala’s ears while she tried to listen to what her staff said was a muddled translation in the other. She was also confused because Salazar was referring to a “press conference” but that wasn’t the exact event that was planned.

“I definitely don’t know anything about that press conference,” Shalala responded, according to the Herald. “But I absolutely oppose the Cuban government.”

When she got her bearings, Shalala criticized Salazar for giving what she described as a softball interview with Castro years before, a criticism Shalala reiterated Wednesday.

“I have an opponent that treated Castro with enormous respect, bowed to him and called him ‘El comandante.’ I would never do that. Nor would I ever stand next to them at any time,” Shalala said. “Our positions are very clear on socialism and communism. Whether its Maduro, or Ortega ... or Castro. Our position is that we hate these people. We hate what they’ve done to their people.”

But where Shalala emphasized how much she disliked Castro, Pelosi declined to say whether she agreed or disagreed with Lee’s comments about mourning the dead dictator.

“I never interpret, question the motivation, or speak for my colleagues,” she said. “That’s why I’m the leader.”